Flummoxed by the Fourth Race
by Sally Mn
Summary: If Robert was giving a report on this to General Hammond... Daniel wanted to be there.


**Flummoxed by the Fourth Race**

"So I don't think it's an alien Book of the Dead," Robert said slowly, looking at Daniel over the top of his glasses. "Rather a pity, I have to say I prefer aliens that way. What do you think?"

Daniel blinked. "I'm thinking that if you and Dr Fuentes," he gave a brief, disbelieving thought of the fruitbat-faced senior linguist working with Robert on this one, "are giving a report on this to General Hammond in the near future, I want to be there."

Robert frowned. "Well actually..."

"Robert, I wouldn't miss it for the world."

Respect and esteem Hammond as he truly did, Daniel could not resist the prospect of the preternaturally unflappable head of Stargate Command having to keep a straight face as he absorbed the news about the piece of archaic alien apparatus acquired so proudly by SG-2 and being studied so carefully, so thoroughly and oh-so-slowly by Rothman, Fuentes and their little team. Yes, it was definitely made by the Furlings, the last of the 'Alliance of Four Great Races' (they'd met two of said races, the Asgards and the annoyingly perfect Nox, and Daniel had his suspicions that he at least now knew an Ancient) and the only one for whom they were still totally unable to crack the written language or the sparse, rarely found contraptions. But no, it was not only _not_ anything the military could use for good or bad - aka weaponry - but it wasn't even the highly esoteric but reasonably respectable cache of ancient information and lore that they'd believed.

SG-2 would be almost as disillusioned - if not as appalled - as Sam would. But to be fair, Daniel mused, determinedly _not_ thinking about Sam as he studied the alien lettering that covered both pictures of the device and of the decaying site it had been found on, it was certainly helping with the deciphering of the language. _And_ it was helping to keep his mind off his missing team for - oh, what was it now? Forty minutes? That had to be a record over the last seven days...

General Hammond, egged on by his CMO, had ordered the entire SGC to keep Daniel distracted while he was recovering from surgery _and_ fretting about the rest of SG-1, wherever they had vanished to _while_ he'd been too busy getting over the surgery to be with them. Daniel knew that, and appreciated the way academic and military alike were doing their collective best to obey... and failing miserably, almost as miserably as Daniel was doing distracting himself.

The Rothman-Fuentes report, hundreds of pages on what was proving to be a technological Enquire-Within-Upon-A-Highly-And-Unexpectedly-Specific-Everything was doing a _way_ better job.

He leafed through the pages and pages and _pages _of closely typed wordage Robert had brought him. His favorite kind of words (though to be honest, he loved most of them): convoluted, complex, deeply immersed in both conjugate theory and application _and_ xenohistorical archaeological speculation... and best of all, lots of them, spilling lavishly across the pages and running like balm across his mind.

He needed this so much right now. Dr Frasier and the medical staff might frown and mutter about overdoing it and overtaxing himself and shouldn't he rest and not think too much? - but Robert, more than anyone in the SGC, knew better. Not thinking too much wasn't an option, so thinking too much about something he _liked_ thinking too much about was... a better one.

Definitely.

Daniel's fingers traced over the photograph of the lettering, which completely covered the cigar-shaped something that Ferretti's team had dragged back (it was, to be fair, a _seven-foot _cigar-shaped something) from P5F-44F. Just on the surface alone, there was definitely more Furling that they had collected in all the SGC's history, and that was _before _someone with an annoying habit of fiddling with priceless artifacts had, err, got it working (Jack would never _ever_ let his two scientists forget the month they and their people had spent trying to make it do anything before that, or admit it was sheer dumb luck on his part and damn it, he was _not thinking_ about Jack) and found it to be some sort of alien almanac, a non-lethal treasure trove of a kind.

Masses of historic information about long dead alien races and - they'd thought - their religious and funerary beliefs. Robert and the other archeologists had been thrilled to take it on and - maybe a _little _too well taught by Daniel himself - had found no less than fourteen excuses to return to the planet.

Daniel wasn't jealous. He wasn't. And he also wasn't thinking of the way Teal'c would quirk an exasperatingly loquacious eyebrow of disbelief at him when he _said _he wasn't.

"Well," Robert repeated, "actually, we - that is, the whole academic staff, everyone who's read it - thought _you_ might like to take the lead on presenting this to the General."

Daniel stared at him. "Me? Why me?"

"Because you're the senior archeologist _and_ the head linguist, and the foremost expert on Furling to date and... well yeah, okay. Because the General won't fire you."

"Robert -"

"He likes you."

"He doesn't dislike you."

"Right."

"And neither does Jack. He's just..."

"You've said it before, Daniel. Intimidated because I'm way smarter than he is." Robert snorted. "He hides it well, you've got to admit. Anyway, that's not the point."

"The point is, Robert, that you and Fuentes and your assistants did the work on this and deserve the credit."

"Or blame. Be honest, Daniel, they weren't happy when we - or rather _you _-"

"- Because _you _found a pressing need to be six floors down in the storage levels!"

"- When you told them we thought it would be a treatise on funerary practices of several hundred long-dead alien races," Robert continued calmly. "They only let us keep going with the survey because you then convinced the Air Force that it was still - what did you call it?"

"Socio-political documentation and xenoanthropological analysis with possible applications to contemporary prospective engagements with civilizations that evolved from the source cultures outlined, unquestionably germane to any realistic benefit expected from interaction with..." Daniel paused. "I don't recall the rest."

"Neither would the brass, probably. You know, you're _good_."

Daniel shrugged.

"Anyway, _you _were the one who persuaded them that it would help us actually decipher Furling and about all the benefits that would bring if the SCG ever finds anything from them useful to the _military _mindset."

Daniel winced at the sardonic swipe at their paymasters: never mind that he thought - and said - much the same sometimes, Robert could be almost as tactless as Jack (not thinking about Jack, remember) _and _as blunt as Teal'c (or about Teal'c, damn it). His friend didn't notice, but went on carelessly. "Look, you agree we should keep going with this."

Daniel was tempted, he couldn't deny it. No matter what the content of this encyclopedic alien source, it was pretty much a Rosetta Stone for that mysterious language.

Though if he was honest, he really would _love _to hear Dr Fuentes describe it that way to an assembly of canny, suspicious, hard-nosed top military brass. A Rosetta Stone from Outer Space.

And she would too.

"The General will listen to you, Daniel." Robert interrupted his thoughts. "Hey, the Pentagon probably listen to you, well, sometimes, if you talk at them for long enough."

Daniel, staring down at the final paragraphs of the Rothman-Fuentes report, could well believe that it. Hammond and the Pentagon - maybe even the President - would be struck dumb at first, and he had to admit, a struck dumb audience could be quite useful if he had to talk very very _very _fast to get his way...

He looked at Robert suspiciously. "And when do you think I should do this?"

"Oh fine, not until you've read it all... which will take you, let's see, 600 pages?"

"Plus indices."

"I like indices."

"I know."

"Fuentes likes them even more."

"I've noticed."

"And be honest, Daniel, you like them most of all. I proofread your dissertations, remember? So we can see about briefing the General in two days, you _should_ have it finished by then."

"Of course, what else do I have to do?"

Robert - in a rare flash of tact - didn't touch that, or the slightly fragile voice it was said in. Daniel had a suspicion that his friend, never one to think even slightly positive, was not holding out much hope for the rest of SG-1's return. That wasn't really a problem, though, and less painful than all the people who kept thinking and talking positive at him.

Robert didn't get on with the military, or most of the hard science people, many of the linguists and anthropologists and... to be honest, pretty much anyone up to and including the catering staff, and didn't really care. Daniel had never regretted bringing him to the SGC though, he loved having Robert here as a colleague and a sometimes needed break from the military mindset (no matter how much he cared for his team and no, he still wasn't thinking about any of them, sometimes he _needed_ to connect with someone like Robert - or Fuentes - as alien to his team's mindset as, well, the Furlings might be) and as that sounding board and reminder of where they had both come from.

Archaeology.

Ancient languages.

Amazing slices of past life just like this.

"All right, I'll open the briefing," he said, "and help it along. But the actual presentation, you'll have to share between you." It would certainly be a distraction and a half - if he needed it by then. Maybe he wouldn't.

Maybe SG-1 would be back together again, but he'd do it anyway, for Robert.

"Ahh... okay," and Robert looked as if he hadn't expected even that much, "as long as you can convince the General that it's, well, _just_ as useful as a linguistic and deciphering aid and -"

"Rosetta Stone from Outer Space?"

"If you want." Robert looked at him warily. "You don't, do you?"

"Ahh... no. Definitely not." Actually yes, but Daniel was already planning to suggest to Fuentes that _she_ do the honors with that one.

"You know," and Robert's expression was a bizarre mixture of gloomy foreboding and academic pride, which Daniel, after all these years with the SGC, _totally_ understood, "Fuentes spent nearly six weeks trying to work out all the different terms and synonym usages for frottage alone, something like seventeen hundred when you add up all the different races. It's pretty amazing how differently they all -"

"I'm sure, Robert." He tried to imagine the General being told that, and almost forgot his team and his worry for oh, _at least_ a minute and a half at the mental image.

Not an alien Book of the Dead, but more a Furling Kama Sutra, in astonishing and sometimes blessedly incomprehensible depth, detail and deliberation. Somehow, Daniel thought as he flicked through the opening paragraphs - all methodology, dry and verbose and oh so innocently giving no hint of what was inside - he shouldn't have been surprised.

He was obviously going to have to hone his arguments about relevant applications with contemporary offworld civilizations, but that wouldn't be hard. The principal was the same, even if the source material was about sex rather than death.

Robert paused, shrugged and gave a half-smile. "It's all in there. I'll leave you to it, oh, and Daniel...?"

He looked up.

"Maybe I don't get on with him - with _them_ - and I guess I hope they're back soon. But -"

"Don't invite them?"

"Uhh, yeah."

"I won't."

"Great, great. I'll just... come back tomorrow then." He gave a slight wave, and left, probably already trying to work out how they were going to do this.

Daniel lay back, ignoring the slight pain from his scar, and picked out the page in which SGC staff had spent weeks tracing the complexities of symbolism and graphic representation (unfortunate terminology there, yes) for a myriad of alien expressions for various forms of...

Oh, now _that_ was fascinating. He read a little more, trying to imagine... no. Physically impossible, at least for humans or any other race he knew of. Which meant a new (totally new, as his normally vivid imagination faltered and failed) physiology for xenobiologists to get excited over, and that would bring the life science division in on his and Robert's side.

And at least they could now spell fornication in Furling now. And he would never admit it to Jack - or Sam or Teal'c - or Hammond or even Robert himself - but to himself? Yes, honestly - whether from linguistic passion or a galactically-honed sense of the ridiculous - he actually _loved_ the fact that they could.

He sent a mental note of thanks to Robert, and all of the people who had at least tried to help him through this week, then settled down to read, knowing that he really _could_ lose himself in the words, almost deep enough to forget the worry, maybe long enough that they'd come home and the worry would be over.

Maybe a Rosetta Stone in Outer Space wasn't such a bad idea after all.

**-the end-**


End file.
